I am a Senior Political Contributor at Forbes and the official 'token lefty,' as the title of the page suggests. However, writing from the 'left of center' should not be confused with writing for the left as I often annoy progressives just as much as I upset conservative thinkers. In addition to the pages of Forbes.com, you can find me every Saturday morning on your TV arguing with my more conservative colleagues on "Forbes on Fox" on the Fox News Network and at various other times during the week serving as a liberal talking head on other Fox News and Fox Business Network shows. I also serve as a Democratic strategist with Mercury Public Affairs.

The Corporate Blackmailing Of America Is Now All the Rage

For the past week, I have watched with amazement as one restaurant chain after another—the very people who peddle the high caloric foods laden with the fat and sugar that have contribute so mightily to the nation’s health problems and the resulting costs—announced their plans to cut back on employee work hours.

Why?

Because an employee who works less than 30 hours a week is not an employee at all for purposes of the Affordable Care Act. Thus, by cutting back work hours for dishwashers, servers, bussers, etc., these franchised chain restaurant operations can skirt the requirements of Obamacare by providing employees with less work.

Leading the way is Papa John’s pizza pusher-in-chief, John Schnatter, who has gone public in a big way decrying the damage Obamacare would do to his business.

So serious is the problem—Mr. Schnatter would have us believe—that he is being forced to cut back working hours for his workers to avoid the crushing costs of providing his beloved employees and their families with a healthcare plan or, alternatively, raise the price of his pizzas by $.14 a pie.

This is a national crisis. I mean, when it comes to buying a pizza, that $.14 is surely a deal breaker!

But let’s keep in mind the choice Schnatter is really offering us.

By avoiding the health care reform law through paying less to his employees as a result of cutting back their hours, Schnatter is only increasing the costs that you and I pick up when his employees—having no health insurance—show up at the emergency room for basic care because they have nowhere else to go. Thus, while Mr. Schnatter is deeply distressed by the notion of taking some responsibility for the health of the very employees who make his business work so that he can earn millions, he is perfectly happy to have you and I subsidize his profits by allowing us to pick up the cost of health care for his workers because he will not.

The result of Schnatter’s behavior—along with the other restaurant owners playing this game—is to leave it to me to subsidize Schnatter’s profits despite the fact that I am not a customer for his pizzas that find to be mediocre at best. I will be left to pay the bills for his employees’ health care needs and, as a result, contribute directly to his bottom line.

Not a bad deal for Mr. Schnatter. He gets to profit from someone like me despite my choice to not spend a dime in one of his restaurants. Nice work if you can get it but hardly what we would typically view as an example of free enterprise.

While this “three nickels a pie” charge would, apparently, be the final straw in driving you into the waiting arms of your neighborhood, non-franchised pizzeria (a pretty good idea if you ask me) it turns out that things might not be so dire for poor Mr. Schnatter after all.

In a brilliant article by Forbes’ own Caleb Melby —by the way, I have never been prouder of one of my Forbes colleagues—Caleb breaks down the real costs to Papa John’s, using hard, cold math to reveal a little truth. We learn, for starters, that the actual cost of the Affordable Care Act to Mr. Schnatter’s business runs much closer to 4 cents a pizza than it does to 14 cents. Could Mr. Schnatter be setting himself up to make a few extra pennies per pie using Obamacare as an excuse or is he simply exaggerating his plight to sell his political narrative?

Certainly, this is not the first time a new cost item has resulted in a small increase in the price of Mr. Schnatter’s product. However, I strongly suspect that it is the first time he has chosen to politicize a cost increase to make an ideological point. As a result, Caleb’s article serves to expose Schnatter for what he really is—an ideologue who would gladly put a metaphoric gun to the head of his employees, using them as pawns in the effort to sell his own political beliefs which, in the opinion of this writer, have no more substance nor taste than the pizzas he peddles. And if he can make a few extra bucks in the process? It’s all good then, right Mr. Schnatter?

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

I have a really wild idea: in the interests of PUBLIC HEALTH POLICY, I consider all food service employees having access to health care a Really Good Idea.

Think it through, people: Do you REALLY want your wait staff, or your pizza delivery person, SICK? In a world where the word “pandemic” is a real issue?

We constantly overlook the fact that poverty-level wages, no paid sick days, and lack of even basic health care is a public health problem, particularly in food service.

Not to mention the fact that the Papa John’s and Walmarts of the world are the real “moochers” here, as they push their employees into being subsidized by we, the taxpayers for basic food security and health care.

A conservative website, Freedom Works, put out a list of about 20 companies that were all going to cut expansion, cut employee hours because of the ACA. Every. Single. One. of these companies posted profits in the September 2012 quarter of well over $50 million dollars. Since the article is predominately about the restaurant business, Darden Restaurants is right there with Papa John’s on cutting employee hours. Darden owns Olive Garden, Red Lobster and several other well known eating establishments. Darden posted a 2 BILLION dollar quarter. The sheer concept of these companies not wanted to provide basic health insurance when they drop the cost of the employee’s salary on their customers in the first place is, quite frankly, insulting. Minimum wage has not increased since 2009, and does not even look like they are going to discuss increases. Probably because of all the controversy right now on “jobs being cut” for the ACA. The irony is, Darden was rated as one of the top 100 places to work on the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality index. Finances isn’t one of the topics on that list, but offering healthcare to domestic partners was. This obviously doesn’t cover the server staff, if they are cutting hours to avoid having to give employee healthcare…………… The rich get richer, and the rest of us foot the bill.

Dear Papa John, I would not care if you raised the price of your pizzas by .15. I wouldn’t even care if you raised the price by $15.00 because I won’t be buying anymore anyway. What I do care about is that you whine and piss and moan about having to provide access to even the most basic affordable health care for those “least of these” of your minimum wage employees. FU Papa John. And your cardboard pizza, too.

What I find interesting is that we find it acceptable to treat machinery “better” than we treat employees–both from the perspective of corporations and from the larger perspective of society as a whole.

If you want to remain in business and productive (and profitable) you maintain your equipment–periodic preventative maintenace–and you fix it when it is broken. It’s only common sense (because it will ultimately cost you money if you don’t do it) and is seen as part of the cost of doing business.

Nobody really thinks twice about this–oh, they might think about buying different equipment that is more economical to maintain or operate, but not about eliminating those costs altogether… basically because it isn’t possible to eliminate them.

But we are unwilling to do the same thing for other human beings… the people whose labor (and ideas and creativity) enable us to stay in business… and we don’t even have to pay the capital cost of “making” the people in the first place.

We have a rather disturbing sense of community and lack of solicitude for our fellows, even when we can afford it. Corporate culture merely exaggerates this as it shuffles the responsibility for moral action off to a ficticious entity which has no remorse–indeed, no innate moral capability–and that provides a seperation between the individual and the consequences (moral and ethical) of their actions and decisions.

Is it really so hard to comprehend that his initial estimate of “$0.14 a pizza” wasn’t accurate or all-inclusive? You take a statement issued months ago from a single company as the only evidence that these hour reductions aren’t necessary.

The real issue is these oligopolies. If they can raise their prices and cut wages then they should. No one but a fool expects a business to act in favor of what they perceive as ‘good’. Competition needs to exist in order to give big business a run for their money. Competition, ie. new business and small business is what we need, and we accomplish that by reducing taxes and removing ineffective regulations.

There’s not one economic school that agrees with modern liberals aside from Karl Marx. This idea that government can effective micro-manage business is absolutely ridiculous. Employers shouldn’t be managing health insurance… health insurance should function as “insurance” — not a bloody school meal plan. I suggest everyone gets back to the basics.

You wrote, “There’s not one economic school that agrees with modern liberals aside from Karl Marx.” You should read Adam Smith sometime…the Adam Smith generally regarded as the father of capitalism. I think you would be very, very surprised.

Actually, I do not perceive Adam Smith as a modern liberal. I do perceive him as someone who had a lot to contribute when it comes to how we view the world today and put forward concepts that would certainly disprove the notion that the commenter put forward regarding Karl Marx. There are elements of Smith in most of the political-economic philosophies active today. That is the point.